


and nostalgia is the worst pain of all (Azure)

by Legendaerie



Series: Watercolors [3]
Category: Free!
Genre: Ambigious Relationship, M/M, Stream-of-conciousness writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 09:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4516656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Haru strikes out for shore.</p><p>Or, Can The Ghosts Of Your Past Still Inhabit Bodies?</p>
            </blockquote>





	and nostalgia is the worst pain of all (Azure)

**Author's Note:**

> i found this half-finished in my drafts folder and it's nearing two years old. i haven't written free! fic in AGES and i was oddly fond of this. so WHOOPS. finally finished the series. go me.

At exactly 6:47 in the morning he opens his eyes.

The morning air is cold, but not crisp - instead it is clear and sweet, soft around the edges. The usual scents of humanity (frying oils, faint salt of the ocean, trash rotting in the barrels) is blanketed, blurred by the scent of blossoms. It's early spring and the first day of the new school year.

Haru rolls away from the clock and blinks up at the ceiling, fragments of his dream clinging to him like cobwebs. It's been a while since he dreamed of Rin's face, of the glint of his smile distant but still remembered. He touches his tongue to the roof of his mouth as if he could taste the emotion he wakes tangled in, just as cloying and real as his sheets.

Guilt.

To say that it's the one thing holding him back would be an exaggeration and a lie. There's a whole cluster of issues that keep him silent, keep him waiting in the background; an amalgamation of metals forged in the anchor that holds him in place with the drifting tide. It was still his choice to stay behind, after all. He could not have followed Rin-- he should not have followed, and he had not followed so why does he still reflect on what might have been?

Haru closes his eyes and longs to drift freely, to sink, even. But sleep has fled him entirely, and he rises to begin his morning ritual. He rises, slightly unsteady, and grabs both a towel and a swimsuit on his way to the bathroom.

Once cleaned, he sinks into the warm water, letting out his breath in a controlled stream of bubbles until his nose dips beneath the surface. He used to believe the water was kind to him; that it was on his side, that he didn't have to fight it to swim but to join with it. Now, however... not so much. It was still a part of him, but just as he's aged and lost some of his luster so had the water.

He hasn't had a day like this in a while. It's strange. It's bitter. It's lacking color.

Haru pulls himself out of the tub, the calm surface of the water breaking into waves that slapped against his skin-- and suddenly, he remembers what it felt like to have Rin's arms around his shoulders, Rin's smile to snap him out of a trance, Rin's body arching above him as they joined each other in the water and practiced their exchanges for the relay...

He wipes the water off his skin, dials the number to his high school on his cell phone with wet-slick fingers. Today is not something he can deal with right now.

_"Iwatobi High School. This is Konishi speaking. How may I help you?"_

"Haruka Nanase cannot make it to school today. Please let his teachers know."

He doesn't wait for the secretary to reply and hits the 'end call' option.

Still he lingered, an aftertaste of the blue-eyed lonely child and his kindly caretaker with the flavor of neither. He'd buried something of himself alongside his grandmother and sent the rest of his heart in a message in a bottle, out to sea.

And when it finally came back, he broke it into pieces by accident.

 

* * *

 

Makoto retrieves him the next day, finding him drifting in his tub again, and knows well enough not to bother trying to chide his best friend. Haru is fine with that. Happy, even. He knew he couldn't avoid things forever.

But when Nagisa joins them, begs them, wheedles them into heading back to their old swim club, Haru feels the anchor move.

 

* * *

 

It already felt like they were grave robbing before Nagisa chimed in with the ghost story. "People say they sometimes hear voices crying inside," he teases, and Haru feels the chills run up Makoto's spine just from here. It just feels-- wrong to do this, but if they don't get it now then the time capsule, too, will be left behind. And Haru doesn't want that for anybody.

So he follows his friends inside and through the bones of the building, and Haru doesn't hear anything crying. The wind feels more like a sigh of relief that this was all coming to an end, and he gets that feeling. Understands the ache to be left alone and not expected to do anything, like to win or to enter a relay or to move on after--

The pictures are still up in the locker rooms. It stings to think about, really - that no one else really cared enough to take these photos home. But Haru doesn't care for these strangers, not enough to take their ghosts home; not when Makoto murmurs something under his breath and pockets all the lost souls on the walls. Makoto's kind like that. He'll return them to their owners if he can find them, talk to the store keeper or the business man who's always late for his train or the old woman who grows tangerines for the whole block until he matches up the faces on the paper with their older selves. Which almost begs the question - is Rin even the boy whose arm is wrapped around his shoulder anymore?

\--after he hears footsteps, catches the world-weary gleam of ruby eyes and feels his heart slam into his ribs like it's trying to escape, Haru doesn't hear anything else anymore. But he can't help but wonder, in those soft moments where Rin is cold and quiet, if the building wasn't haunted after all.

But Rin says "let's race" and he knows it's just an echo of a couple years ago but he wants to believe in it anyway. His swimsuit is still tight under his skin and he doesn't care what Makoto says, doesn't care what Nagisa says, he doesn't care doesn't care never did care under Rin showed up and shoved all of his caring onto him. The edge of the pool is rough under his hands, concrete melting into sand after a lack of care, and even though he knew it was empty he was more than willing to plunge into solid concrete just to chase after Rin this time.

"Tch," Rin clicks, a dismissive sound that resounds in Haru's head. Tch. Like he doesn't care. Like he didn't care. Haru wants to grab him again, but there are walls springing up between them with every step Rin takes that brings them further apart. And when the trophy hits the ground like a gauntlet, Haru hears the warning challenge underneath.

_Catch me if you can._


End file.
